Kuhn vs. Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science (Revolutions in Science) by Steve Fuller (PDF)

Description

Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions has sold over a million copies in more than twenty languages and has remained one of the ten most cited academic works for the past half century. In contrast, Karl Popper’s seminal book The Logic of Scientific Discovery has lapsed into relative obscurity. Although the two men debated the nature of science only once, the legacy of this encounter has dominated intellectual and public discussions on the topic ever since.Almost universally recognized as the modern watershed in the philosophy of science, Kuhn’s relativistic vision of shifting paradigms―which asserted that science was just another human activity, like art or philosophy, only more specialized―triumphed over Popper’s more positivistic belief in science’s revolutionary potential to falsify society’s dogmas. But has this victory been beneficial for science? Steve Fuller argues that not only has Kuhn’s dominance had an adverse impact on the field but both thinkers have been radically misinterpreted in the process. This debate raises a vital question: Can science remain an independent, progressive force in society, or is it destined to continue as the technical wing of the military-industrial complex? Drawing on original research―including the Kuhn archives at MIT―Fuller offers a clear account of “Kuhn vs. Popper” and what it will mean for the future of scientific inquiry.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review This is an eloquently written book, offering new and interesting perspectives on the moral and social ramifications of this debate. — Ray Percival ― New ScientistA succinct yet in-depth inquiry into a significant philosophical issue. ― KirkusIt’s a fascinating and, at 132 pages, delightfully concise work. — Gregory Mone ― Popular ScienceA feisty and rich little book…always stimulating — A. C. Grayling ― Financial TimesThis slight volume is a lively, incisive volume…This volume will be of great interest both to academic specialists and general readers…Recommended. ― ChoiceKuhn vs. Popper is a concise and engaging book that philosophers of science, investigators of political thought and, indeed, laymen with a philosophical interest will find an interesting read. — Milja Kurki ― History of Political ThoughtProvocative and brilliant. — Neil McLaughlin ― Canadian Journal of Sociology OnlineA provocative read. — Robert J. Deltete ― Philosophy In Review About the Author Steve Fuller is professor of sociology at the University of Warwick, England, and the author of Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This short book (122 pages) reveals insights into ideas that shaped – and are shaping still – the modern world.Should science have the final word on every belief?Everything – Politics? Economics? Religion? History? Ethics?Is there only one science or is each one different, separate?And finally, who decides? The group of learned scientists? Or should all just accept the ideas that succeed and reject ones that fail? Fuller presents a good analysis. Chapters -1. In search of the causes of a non-event2. Kuhn and Popper: A case of mistaken identities3. Popperian suspicion and Kuhnian vindication4. We’ve been here before5. Dialectics as the pulse of scientific progress6. A parting shot at the misunderstanding7. Why philosophers get no respect from scientists8. So, Why are philosophers of science pro-science?9. The return of the repressed: philosopher as Tory historians of science10. The Religious Unconscious of the debate11. De we believe by evidence or decision?12. The University as the absent presence13. Popper and Adorno united: The rationalist left at positivism wake14. Popper and Adorno divided: The rationalist left haunted by Historicism15. How to be responsible for ideas – The Popperian way16. Failing the Popperian test for intellectual responsibilitiy: Rorty on Heidegger17. Is Thomas Kuhn the American Heidegger?From introduction:”These issues plumb the depths of the Western psyche: What is the relationship between knowledge and power? Can science bring unity to knowledge? Can history bring meaning to life? At the same time, these issues are entangled in more secular concerns about economy and society, politics and war.” (2)Fuller wrote this in 2003. Still valid.Can/Should knowledge be found by each person or given by experts?”Who needs an explicit social contract for science, when science’s own social relations constitute a natural aristocracy?” (3)”Popper’s view that a non-scientist might critique science for failing to abide by its own publicly avowed standards is rarely found inside academia today. . . . It comes as no surprise that philosophers today sooner criticize Creationists for violating evolutionary strictures than evolutionists for violating more general scientific norms – an activity for which Popper had been notorious.” (3)Science, in recent decades, has been repeatedly disgraced. Climategate, cold fusion, cholesterol, global cooling, Piltdown man, Sokal hoax, eugenics, etc., etc..One striking chapter is entitled – ”The Return of the Repressed”. . .”Kuhn paved the way for the postmodern critique of Whig history by calling for two ‘separate but equal’ historiographies of science – an airbrushed, inspirational one for scientists (and the general public) and a confusing but more accurate one for historians. Kuhn accepted this version of the double-truth doctrine as a Faustian bargain: scientists live a noble lie in public view, while historians cultivate the truth in the relative obscurity of their profession.” (55)Now suspicion of history has made it almost useless.Fuller comments on the modern turn to irrationality. He cites astrology, and . . .”. . . today astrology is hardly alone in cultivating this form of irrationalism. The demographic and climatological models used to forecast ecological crisis often concentrate the policy imagination on, say, carbon emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels, while deferring more direct solutions to problems relating to poverty and development (which would involve political and economic regime changes). . . . Something similar may be said about the attempts by self styled ‘sociobiologists’, ‘evolutionary psychologists’, and ‘behavioral geneticists’ to trace complex features of the human condition directly to bits of DNA.” (93)Atoms are matter – therefore only atoms matter. Ideas are not matter – therefore they never matter.Five page glossary, five pages of suggestions for further reading, eight page index. No photographs.Writing for academics. General reader will need background in Popper and Kuhn, not to mention Lakatos, Feyerabend and Heidegger.

⭐Fuller’s “Kuhn vs. Popper” tells of the authoritarian Kuhn and the libertarian Popper, and their separate ideals of science indicated below:(1) Thomas Kuhn, in The Structure of Science, related science to the fallibility of scientists, and this made science into a progression of phase changes (Kuhn’s paradigm transitions). Science could not be separated from either scientist or from history. The ruling paradigm was an opiate, a habitual application of the one induction that gave its support to an authoritarian class; breaking the paradigm required something special.(2) Karl Popper’s The Logic of Scientific Discovery departed significantly from Kuhn’s view. Popper was a deductivist, and he wanted to bring scientific theories to the test of falsification, mere verification of the ever-go-lucky induction would not do. Popper’s deduction was meant to eliminate induction by refutation, bringing science closer to an ideal that is independent of the fallibility of scientists. Popper wanted to liberate science from the dictates of the ruling paradigm.Fuller (page 31) writes: “While neither Kuhn nor Popper would care to deny that a specific paradigm may dominate the understanding of a particular slice of reality at a particular time, they differ over whether it should be treated as a source of stability (Kuhn) or a problem to be overcome (Popper).”Fuller’s book in interesting (worth four stars) because of the contrast made between Kuhn and Popper found in the first half of the book. The confusion comes later, but Fuller (page viii) shows little affection for Kuhn from the get-go, and writes: “The more I have tired to make sense of Kuhn’s words and deeds, the more I have come to regard him as an intellectual coward who benefitted from his elite institutional status in what remains the world’s dominant society.” Fuller tells us that Kuhn won the class struggle, and Fuller’s own emotionality betrays his affection for Popper’s libertarianism. From about chapter 13 on, Fuller stops comparing Kuhn and Popper directly, and Theodor Adorno and Martin Heidegger are noted. Fuller’s views become more political as the reader approaches the end of the book.Politics can only be confusing. Despite Heidegger’s Nazi past, despite the cold war and the Vietnam war, Fuller fails to discredit Kuhn’s privileged professional life. Fuller’s criticism of Kuhn’s silence on moral issues goes nowhere, in my view. My impressions aside, Fuller has made a stronger case for his criticism in “Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times.” Nevertheless, there is no Popperian deduction that I know of that will remove the confusion from Fuller’s politics. What Fuller is doing is not deduction, rather it is an exploration of history and it is dialectical. Fuller’s dialectical path to truth is closer to Kuhn’s history-knows-best-approach than it is to Popper’s call-for-empirical-refutation, at least in my opinion.Yet if Popper’s science was so wonderful in Fuller view why then did it fail? The highly irrate Stove, in “Anything Goes”, tells us why: Popper fell for Hume’s inductive skepticism. Popper, like Fuller, gives to deduction a perfection that cannot be given to any logic independent of the emotions of the logician. Induction cannot be reduces by deduction, the two must stand independent yet one logic cannot eliminate the other. Therefore, there must be something important that is dialectical, something missing from Fuller’s account even as Fuller relies much on dialectical logic.The confident induction and the doubting deduction as emotions are made obvious by a read of Stove, or Fuller. Popper’s deduction works to break free of the overbearing induction, while Kuhn’s induction works to return us to a blissful automatic polite. It can only be that deduction and induction are one in the same emotion, only coming at us from a different point of view. Schelling’s transcendental idealism gives support to this view, as a sensation must come that is found breaking away from itself if only to return later to get a better look of itself. Error recognition is required for induction (as Popper demanded), but it is also needed for deduction (something Popper and Fuller forgot), and it is also needed on something that has to do with emotionality (what Charles S. Peirce calls abduction). The three levels of error recognition returns us to science again, but this cannot be a confused dialectical science that Marx would have us follow. This science would integrate both Kuhn and Popper, something that Fuller’s bitterness missed.Disclosure: My agenda is declared in my profile.

⭐Popper takes science to mean “objective inquiry”, or “philosophy by more exact means” to use Popper’s own phrase. When we look at today’s university and corporate science institutions, we do not find objective inquiry. Therefore, what we call “science” is in fact pseudo-science, according to Popper. As Fuller states on p. 29, “Science’s success as a source of societal governance and economic growth may have been at the cost of its progress as a form of inquiry.”A parallel can be drawn to what Walter Benjamin wrote about the concept of progress in industry.”This is how the angel of history must look. His face is turned toward the past. Where a chain of events appears before us, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles debris on top of debris and hurls it before his feet…. A storm is blowing from Paradise and has got caught in his wings; it is so strong that the angel can no longer close them. This storm drives him irresistibly into the future to which his back is turned. That, which we call progress, is this storm.” – Thesis IX, On the Concept of HistoryWe mistake an accumulation of debris for progress in industry in the same way that, according to Popper, we mistake an accumulation of pseudo-science for progress in science.

Keywords

Free Download Kuhn vs. Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science (Revolutions in Science) in PDF format
Kuhn vs. Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science (Revolutions in Science) PDF Free Download
Download Kuhn vs. Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science (Revolutions in Science) 2004 PDF Free
Kuhn vs. Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science (Revolutions in Science) 2004 PDF Free Download
Download Kuhn vs. Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science (Revolutions in Science) PDF
Free Download Ebook Kuhn vs. Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science (Revolutions in Science)